#the designs so far have all been based on specific countries

[reasonsforhope]

"In China, a landscape architect is reimagining cities across the vast country by working with nature to combat flooding through the ‘sponge city’ concept.

Through his architecture firm Turenscape, Yu has created hundreds of projects in dozens of cities using native plants, dirt, and clever planning to absorb excess rainwater and channel it away from densely populated areas.

Flooding, especially in the two Chinese heartlands of the commercial south and the agricultural north, is becoming increasingly common, but Yu says that concrete and pipe solutions can only go so far. They’re inflexible, expensive, and require constant maintenance. According to a 2021 World Bank report, 641 of China’s 654 largest cities face regular flooding.

“There’s a misconception that if we can build a flood wall higher and higher, or if we build the dams higher and stronger, we can protect a city from flooding,” Yu told CNN in a video call. “(We think) we can control the water… that is a mistake.”

Pictured: The Benjakitti Forest Park in Bangkok

Yu has been called the “Chinese Olmstead” referring to Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of NYC’s Central Park. He grew up in a little farming village of 500 people in Zhejiang Province, where 36 weirs channel the waters of a creek across terraced rice paddies.

Once a year, carp would migrate upstream and Yu always looked forward to seeing them leap over the weirs.

This synthesis of man and nature is something that Turenscape projects encapsulate. These include The Nanchang Fish Tail Park, in China’s Jiangxi province, Red Ribbon Park in Qinghuandao, Hebei province, the Sanya Mangrove Park in China’s island province of Hainan, and almost a thousand others. In all cases, Yu utilizes native plants that don’t need any care to develop extremely spongey ground that absorbs excess rainfall.

Pictured: The Dong’an Wetland Park, another Turescape project in Sanya.

He often builds sponge projects on top of polluted or abandoned areas, giving his work an aspect of reclamation. The Nanchang Fish Tail Park for example was built across a 124-acre polluted former fish farm and coal ash dump site. Small islands with dawn redwoods and two types of cypress attract local wildlife to the metropolis of 6 million people.

Sanya Mangrove Park was built over an old concrete sea wall, a barren fish farm, and a nearby brownfield site to create a ‘living’ sea wall.

One hectare (2.47 acres) of Turenscape sponge land can naturally clean 800 tons of polluted water to the point that it is safe enough to swim in, and as a result, many of the sponge projects have become extremely popular with locals.

One of the reasons Yu likes these ideas over grand infrastructure projects is that they are flexible and can be deployed as needed to specific areas, creating a web of rain sponges. If a large drainage, dam, seawall, or canal is built in the wrong place, it represents a huge waste of time and money.

Pictured: A walkway leads visitors through the Nanchang Fish Tail Park.

The sponge city projects in Wuhan created by Turenscape and others cost in total around half a billion dollars less than proposed concrete ideas. Now there are over 300 sponge projects in Wuhan, including urban gardens, parks, and green spaces, all of which divert water into artificial lakes and ponds or capture it in soil which is then released more slowly into the sewer system.

Last year, The Cultural Landscape Foundation awarded Yu the $100,000 Oberlander Prize for elevating the role of design in the process of creating nature-based solutions for the public’s enjoyment and benefit."

-via Good News Network, August 15, 2024

[jacquesthepigeon]

I have personally seen cases where kids grow up as complete strangers to their heritage especially as is the case with my own cousin in California but that involved multiple factors

1) My aunt was isolated and practically estranged from boricua communities. There is a large latino population in California, yes, but it’s mostly Mexican, not a problem, but it’s drastically different from boricua culture. I cannot describe to you how sad it was to see her express relief at being around her people during holidays for the first time in over a decade.

2) Assimilation and shame was heavily encouraged. My aunt’s MIL, from Mexico, went as far as having her name legally changed to its English equivalent. Over the years since my aunt’s move to the states, there have been multiple incidents where she drastically exaggerated the state of the country and our living conditions (all way before the infrastructure, particularly electricity services, got noticeably Bad) based on sensationalist news articles. It got to the point where she called all of us “idiots” for staying.

Bringing it back to ML

According to a 2019 census, there were 71,500 parisians who reported being born in China, a figure that doesn’t account for descendants of chinese immigrants. That is a far cry from leaving Sabine isolated from her culture. She has ample resources to find and participate in a community of fellow chinese immigrants within the city.

In regards to assimilation and shame, just look at her fucking design and hobbies holy shit. It clearly doesn’t apply to her. As for her english (french?) name, it is a fairly common practice for people from various asian countries to adopt an english name. I’ve seen multiple explanations for this ranging from confucian self naming practices being influenced by exposure to western cultures all the way to workplace culture and convenience. In Sabine’s case, because her chinese name is so similar to her western name, I imagine it’s simply a matter of avoiding the headache of constantly correcting people on the spelling and pronunciation of her chinese name. It sucks that it’s something so many immigrants and even tourists have to do to be addressed respectfully but that’s also worth exploring within the narrative.

Which brings me to why it’s important that we recognize the crew’s intentions and POV when discussing how these characters and dynamics are written. They’re not considering any of these and countless other factors that affect how immigrants and their children interact with their own heritage. They want to be praised and lauded for being “inclusive” and “diverse” simply for commodifying a cultural aesthetic. They have no real concern for the people they’re profiting from or their lives and complexities.

So let’s assume for a moment that despite not being affected by any of the factors that I mentioned influenced my own aunt’s lack of educating my cousin about her culture, that’s still an issue that should be addressed specifically in regards to Sabine’s decisions in raising Marinette rather than pushing the blame onto Marinette for “not expressing interest” and learning on her own. The last few times my cousin has come to visit, we do our best to accommodate her and make her as comfortable as possible but when she inevitably lets it show that she is uncomfortable and would prefer to step away from the situation, my aunt has the nerve to shame her for not liking or participating in her culture. I assure you, my aunt was the only one blaming my cousin as we were all silently judging my aunt as she’s obviously the one responsible for it getting to this point, as we have been doing ever since we knew she wasn’t teaching my cousin spanish. So assuming this is the case with Sabine and Marinette, where Sabine had the means to teach Marinette at the very least the basics, and now Sabine is somewhat resentful of Marinette not figuring it out on her own, that is something that definitely needs to be addressed with close attention and care.

But they won’t.

Sabine is not a chinese immigrant in the interest of other chinese immigrants

Marinette is not a white-passing diaspora child in the interest of other white-passing diaspora children

There is no diversity or representation in this show that isn’t meant to turn them into props to make white men look better, be they fictional or real

That is the issue, not the existence of borderline caricature-esque immigrants or white-passing POC in the real world possibly getting representation. It’s not about them, never has been.

[lookingforhappy]

The Birth Locations/Suitcase Reveal Sucks

before you read please don't take this too seriously, I don't have a problem with people who enjoy this reveal I just wish more people would consider/analyse this as I feel like it's very half-assed and not at all well thought out

I know I've written something like this before and i'm sorry to write this again, but I think my arguments have developed and I want to explain better why I hate this decision.

I am referring to this set of posters for season 3

as the stickers on the suitcases were revealed to be their birth locations by Jeff King (executive producer and director) on instagram

the actual answer to his question is "lila's sticker" but semantics/specifics who cares (me)

why I distrust the theory/trivia as a whole

something I think should be considered here is that this is the only confirmation of this piece of trivia.

another example of TUA trivia that has been confirmed by the creators is the statement by Blackman (god ik just ignore that part for now, that isnt the point of the post & he's still a/the creator) on a reddit AMA that Grace helped the siblings choose their names based on their birth countries

however, these are both poorly researched/prepared pieces of trivia because they blatantly contradict each other

Luther's birthplace is Sweden, but Luther isn't a Swedish name, nor was is popular in either 1989 when he was born or 2002 when he was first seen using his name.

Diego is always a fairly popular name in Spanish speaking countries like Mexico but it's hardly high on the list (only statistic I can find is ranked at 31.)

Allison is neither a South African name nor is it listed as it's top names.

Klaus is Germanic (kinda fits the theme) but as far as I can see Klaus is not a biblical name which is much more typical of the Amish. Klaus is also not listed amongst the top Amish names that I've seen.

Five obviously is an outlier here.

Ben is clearly not Korean, and while I have had fun discussing the roots of his name with others (Jae-min becoming Benjamin, and Bin becoming Ben) I don't think that there's any way that the creators will acknowledge this. Ben has origins in Hebrew and is not at all popular in Korea.

Vanya (the applicable name, as Viktor wasn't yet revealed) is a male name in Russia. it's female in other countries like Bulgaria, but not Russia. It's a nickname/evolution of the name Ivan. Vanya is also not a popular name in Russia, but Ivan does seem to be. And I seriously doubt that they're going to reveal that Viktor originally named himself Ivan while he was identifying as female and then decided to change his name anyway?

which is to say, the word of the creator cannot always be trusted/believed, because that's not necessarily what will be reflected in canon or by the other creators.

there is quite a history in fandom of creators not understanding the themes/plotholes of their own creations, so i'm a little stunned at how quickly everyone integrated this into their canon without a second thought.

i have arugments as to why these locations are bad choices for the characters, but first lets take a look at what i believe these stickers were meant to represent

Placing down a read more because this became huge.

what the other stickers reference/mean

it's no secret that i think the stickers were hints to the events (related to each character's arc) of season 3.

but before i get to that let's breakdown the rest of the stickers and their meanings:

all of the umbrella's have an umbrella sticker. Lila is the only one who doesn't (so if we're playing the "who is the odd one out" game then it still falls as Lila because she is the only one without the umbrella sticker)

Luther

Luther dies in Hotel Obsidian, and never makes it physically inside Oblivion or has any part in powering it - so his sticker has the colours/design of Obsidian.

Diego

Diego is one of/the first to discover Hotel Oblivion, so he has the Oblivion colours and logo.

Allison

Allison is involved in Reginald's plot to use Oblivion to reset thte universe, so gets Oblivion's logo instead of Obsidian.

Klaus

Klaus was the one to know and direct them to Hotel Obsidian, so he has that logo.

Five

Five's revelation that he was the Founder of the Commission, and the impact of that discovery, links him to the Commission more so than either hotel.

Viktor

viktor has the hotel Obsidian logo because he has very little impact on anything to do with Oblivion and is one of the votes that decides to remain and die in Obsidian.

Lila

Lila has the Commission because she was raised in the Commission, not the Umbrella Academy.

Lila has the Obsidian logo in opposition to Diego's Oblivion logo as she chooses the opposite of Diego (I personally believe they should have swapped these two but..)

why the birth locations are more likely/appropriate as hints for the events of season 3

Luther - Stockholm, Sweden

This is probably my strongest argument: He is made fun of for having "Stockholm Syndrome" within the show

found: Season 3, episode 3, minute 13.

Luther, obviously spends all of his character development/moments with the Sparrows and Sloane - being kidnapped by them and developing "Stockholm Syndrome" for Sloane (romantic) and for the Sparrows as a whole (platonic/idealism/escapism)

Luther's mother's newpaper cutting also mentions 911 being called, but 911 is not the emergency number of Sweden, 112 is. Argentina, Canada, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Mexico, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, the Philippines, Sint Maarten, the United States, and Uruguay use 911 but not Sweden.

If Monica wasn't in Sweden at the time of Luther's birth, then Stockholm is hardly his birth location.

throughout the seasons we get a few instances of Diego, Ben and Viktor speaking their native languages, hinting that the 7 were all taught their mother's languages (with Allison at least likely learning all 7)

But if Luther is Swedish, why didn't he or Diego know what Oga For Oga meant if that's Luther's mother's language? and why was Five the only person who seemed to understand Swedish when he's not the Swede of the family? Why did Diego not at least recognise his brother's supposed second language? Or Luther for that matter?

Luther was a part of the Academy for 23+ years, longer than anyone, yet Reginald (who expects the best of his children) didn't bother enforcing this as a part of his education? his number one had a worse education than his number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7?

Diego - Mexico

Diego apparently doesn't even get the luxury of a city, place or region. But I can confirm that his mother's newspaper cutting states that he was born in a "small town in Northern Mexico".

However, Diego's sticker could instead be a reference to the Aztecs or Mayans - his sticker has mayan/aztec pyramids on it, I believe maybe Chichen Itza specifically?? Ancient civilisations that were very advanced for their time, and that are somewhat frequently involved in alien conspiracies.

Diego is one the one to open Oblivion when he removes the harpoon, and is the first to enter it and confront the Guardians.

Oblivion is an Ancient building/place built by an Ancient civilisation of what is assumed to be aliens, and Reginald (confirmed alien) is the one to have directed them into Oblivion at first as well.

Allison - Cape Town, South Africa

Nelson Mandela is pretty famous for his part in the anti-apartheid (segregation) movement, helping to end segregation in South Africa. He was jailed in a Cape Town prison for attempting to sabotage the pro-segregation government, and then later his office as president was located in Cape Town.

an easy connection to make with Allison's arc in season 2, and the significance of it in her arc in season 3, with her dealing with PTSD, grief over Ray, and feeling alienated by her family who didn't have the same experience as her in the 60s.

Allson's mother has nothing connecting her to South Africa outside of this, as far as I'm aware.

Klaus - Pennsylvania, USA

This one I will concede is about his birth location. But in this case, it's also heavily related to his season 3 arc, as he is the driving force of the mothers plotline and literally travels to Pennsylvania.

PA is a strong and relevant hint for his s3 arc.

Five - Dublin, Ireland

Five could be connected to Ireland in multiple ways.

(there is a link between Five and JFK, "the 1st Irish American President" but I can't see the link to s3 here so honorary mention only).

A link that I understand is a somewhat touchy topic for any Irish citizens is the stereotype of drunkeness in Ireland. While there have been studies to prove that Ireland doesn't drink more than other countries such as England, it remains a well-known stereotype and the Irish people are statistically more prone to alcohol dependency/addiction.

There is also the phrase "make it Irish" which means to put alcohol in a drink, one of the more popular drinks to do this to is coffee. Which brings us back to Five - he is known for his love of coffee and for getting spectacularly drunk.

season 3 in particular features his drinking addiction in it's full glory. it's also plot relevant as his drunkness causes the murder mystery setup of the final episodes.

(also, while it's not great to have Ireland be the hint to alcohol, it's also not great to have Five, the alcoholic of the series, be the Irish representation)

Another interpretation could be the root of the name "Dublin" meaning "black pool". It was likely derived from the River Poddle which would have been stained black with peat. This could be a hint towards Five's elusive role as the Founder, as his life so far has been stained with childhood abuse, the apocalypse and his foray as an assassin, making the reveal of the Founder a shock.

One other interpretation is the Irish vs. English. Five is perhaps the most skeptical of Reginald throughout season 3, moreso than even Luther or Diego. While England has enraged many countries, Ireland is one of the most well known for it's dislike of the English, and has a lengthy history of war and altercations with England. So Five's sticker may be a hint for his re-ignited distrust of Reginald. It also works well as a predictor for Five and Lila's (English) bathroom fight.

Five's mother's newpaper cutting has several contradictions to the Ireland, Dublin location. First and foremost being that she is cited as being from both a "small seaside community" and from "county clark".

There is no County Clark in Ireland, but there is a County Clare and a County Cork. However, County Clare is on the opposite side of Ireland to Dublin and County Cork is even farther away,

Dublin, as the Capital City, is also not a "small seaside community" by any stretch of the imagination.

And the Irish police would likely not be referred to as "provincial" but instead be called Gardaí or The Garda Síochána.

Viktor - Moscow, Russia

Moscow is seen in season 1, episode 1 very briefly as Reginald arrives to adopt Viktor. You can see both the Spasskaya Tower and St Basil's Cathedral. Viktor also speaks Russian, something that none of his siblings have demonstrated.

However, this is not actually Viktor's birthplace (if we believe that the props have canon information, as most argue that Diego is definately from Mexico due to his cutting stating his mother was in Northern Mexico, etc) as according to his book Viktor was born in "small town off the Southern coast of Russia".

Moscow is nowhere near the coast and is not exactly southern either, nor is it a small town. And while this isn't exaclty specified that the "small town" he visits is the place he was born, it wouldn't make much sense if it wasn't, as Viktor was able to track his mother down via newspaper articles about his birth.

Moscow could mean a lot of things for Viktor's arc:

it could be a reference to s1, ep1 but instead of his exact birth location, it could simply hint to his mother's country and toward Harlan's involvement in the mothers' deaths - and the long reach of his powers from America to Russia.

It could also be a hint to Viktor's significance as a much more involved and aware plot driver this season as Moscow is the politcal centre of Russia as its capital city.

It might also hint at his disconnect from his family (not being a part of the Academy and not understanding the hard decisions and necessary teamwork that come with it) causing tensions, as while Moscow is the political capital, Saint Petersburg is considered the cultural capital.

Plus Moscow's history as the capital works well as a parallel to his journey with his powers, and works as a hint to Viktor developing his powers with Harlan because Moscow also briefly lost its status as the capital to Saint Petersburg, possibly a parallel to Viktor, the most powerful of the Umbrellas, losing his powers to Reginald's drugs. Moscow was later restored as the capital, paralleling Viktor's regaining of his powers.

Lila - Berlin

Lila is nice and simple, she was considered the outlier by Jeff King anyway as her suitcase doesn't match her confirmed birth place (London), and instead is a pretty obvious hint to her time in West Berlin, Germany, with Trudy and Stan.

why i dislike the chosen locations as the birth locations

in general I think it's silly to choose almost all capital cities: Dublin, Moscow, Cape Town, Stockholm, Seoul..

I know these are populous places but there must have been some variation? (aside from Klaus, who has plot armour for this point due to his Amish origins, and Diego, who is the only non-capital city purely because he wasn't given the dignity of a named city/town/village)

it's also lazy writing (and i believe somewhat racist?) to have every sibling come from the country/continent you'd expect?

the latino is mexican

the black woman is african

the asian man is asian

the blonde haired/blue eyed man is scandinavian

even Klaus, Five and Viktor are all white men from predominantly white countries.

at least try to subvert expectations?

to an extent i understand that they were trying to incorporate the actors ethnicities with Justin having korean roots, and David being raised in mexico. But the only irish thing about Aidan is his surname, and Emmy has no known connection to South Africa. I'm also pretty sure Tom isn't swedish at all and Elliot isn't russian.

it's lazy, poorly planned and honestly highly questionable writing at best

[eurothug4000]

INTERVIEW WITH SHIGENOBU MATSUYAMA - PRODUCER ON SILENT HILL THE ARCADE

I had the pleasure of interviewing Matsuyama-san, one of the producers on Silent Hill the Arcade! Here's what he had to say :)

Q - How did the idea for Silent Hill The Arcade come to be?

A - During the arcade boom of the 1990s and the 2000s, a desire was born to combine the unique worldview of the Silent Hill series - which was already a very strong IP console game-wise – with the haunted houses one might find in an amusement part. We wanted something that could provide an easy and pleasurable experience to an extremely varied range of customers… as in, the casual users. This is the idea that brought Silent Hill Arcade (SHA in short) to life. However, since our goal was to create a new kind of experience that could not be replicated anywhere else, we designed a game that could make the most effective use of the 5.1ch surround sound system, which was something that arcade games hadn’t adopted until that point, with a type of cabinet that could be somewhat isolated from the rest of the arcade via the use of curtains.

Q - Roughly how long did development for the game take?

A - At the time, the development cycle of an arcade game was so short it would be unimaginable today. The shortest one was around six months, the longest about one year and a half. I think SHA took us around one year and two months.

Q - What parts of development were most enjoyable for you?

A – Usually, arcade games are tested a certain number of times, both during development and just before launch in each and every country where their release has been scheduled (which, for SHA, meant Japan, the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, France, Hong Kong and Singapore). In order to keep the development budget for SHA as low as possible, however, I personally traveled alone to the US for the market testing, assembled the cabinet all by myself, repaired it when it was out of order, and stood next to it for days on end, pen and paper in my hand, ready to collect the players’ data. Game development, nearly 20 years ago, was very much an analog experience. It was also hard work, but when I look back, I have so many good memories of that time.

Q - Do you remember any kinds of ideas that you and the team wanted to include in the game, but didn’t in the end?

A – I’m sure this will sound obvious, since SHA was based on a pre-existing IP, but since the framework was pretty much already set when it came to characters and plot, we had to be extremely careful not to deviate from it so that we wouldn’t create inconsistencies. Personally, I would have loved to take the story in slightly wilder directions and include new and fresh ideas.

Q - I loved seeing so many locations from Silent Hill 3 and 4 make an appearance in the game! Was the team who worked on those two games involved in making any decisions for Silent Hill The Arcade?

A - We of course personally consulted select staff members of Konami, like for example Producer Yamaoka, with whom I had been acquainted with since before SHA. However, most development teams had a mix of internal and external members that changed pretty fluidly with each and every year, so there was no real collaboration between the various teams.

Q - What level of freedom were you given for creating this original story within the Silent Hill universe? Were you given any specific directives on what you could or could not integrate/use in the story?

A - If I have to express my personal point of view on the matter, however, should you compare the storyline for SHA with the timeline of the other games, you would indeed notice a few minor inconsistencies that we were not able to completely solve. That’s something I still have regrets about.

Q - Tell me about translating a traditional survival horror experience into the rail shooter genre and control style. What kind of considerations did you have to make for this?

A - The biggest challenge was by far to design a game system that could be as simple as possible, and to regulate the level of challenge in a way that felt balanced, because we didn't want to force complicated controls or an exceedingly high difficulty level on the casual arcade players. Moreover, there was another balance we had to strike perfectly: more specifically, the one between the aforementioned "haunted house" element - the one that was unique to SHA, with its sequences of terrifying events - and the thrilling playstyle that a rail shooter should provide to the player.

Q - As a final product, what are your personal thoughts on the game?

A - I think it had a state-of-the-art sound system, that the design of the cabinet, with its creepy-looking curtains, made people want to take a peek inside, and that the rail shooting system was simple and could be enjoyed by virtually everyone. I think we managed to combine these various elements with a one-of-a-kind worldview of Silent Hill in a way that was in my opinion pretty good! Of course, each and every member of the staff did their part, and I thank all of them wholeheartedly.

Q - Are you working on anything currently that you’d like me to mention?

A - Feel free to write whatever you prefer! If anything, I should thank you, since you allowed me to walk down the nostalgia lane and recall memories from almost 20 years ago that had been dimmed down by the passage of time. Thank you very much!

Shigenobu Matsuyama's site: shig.jp

[runwayrunway]

No. 1 - Lufthansa

We begin with a large fish even by the standards of the large pond in which we operate. A very intentionally chosen large fish. Deutsche Lufthansa is Germany’s flag carrier and the second largest carrier in all of Europe by passenger volume. In 2018, they unveiled a new standard livery for their fleet of airplanes, and it...well. It’s this. 

Even the presentation - good lord, is this an auto show?

My feelings on Lufthansa’s 2018 livery are visceral. There’s no mental evaluation required, no taking it in, thinking about the choices made - I look at the modern Lufthansa livery and immediately, profoundly know that I hate it. And that’s not just because of the specific choices made - which are bad - but because of the space they occupy amidst a creatively barren wasteland within livery design. This is going to be a very long post, which isn’t standard for this blog, but my goal for an introduction is to break down exactly the sort of design that made me feel the need to start doing this to begin with. 

But in reality that’s only the beginning. Yes, Lufthansa’s livery is specifically disappointing, but it is so much more than that. It is the purest distillation of the greatest challenge aviation faces today, far weightier than scheduling issues, outdated IT, and runway incursions. It is not the worst example of it, not in the slightest, but it is a large airline which has a very textbook presentation of symptoms and thus feels like a great example to describe exactly what I hate about this sort of design. Let me explain. 

Essentially, airlines have found a formula. It goes as such: 

Almost entirely white body. (There is a name for this trend: Eurowhite.) In some cases, there may be a colour on the underside, generally either a light grey or whichever secondary shade the airline has committed to. In the case of this Lufthansa livery, it is just white. 

Aside from the white body there will be either a single colour (generally some dark blue, or less often some sort of red) or a few colours, usually but not exclusively on flag carriers to match their national branding. (The proliferation of red, white, and blue flags out there means that a disproportionate number of airline liveries are these colours.) Unless it is literally just a white plane meant to be as generic as possible for short turn-overs when leasing, it will at least attempt to have some sort of design, but it will be minimal, and:

All of the detail will be on the tail. There may be coloured winglets or engine nacelles, but other than that it is only at the rear of the plane that you begin to see any interest. Usually this is just a logo, though it may be an abstract design which looks like a default tumblr header. It will often only be on the tail, with nothing at all on the body proper.

The name of the airline written in a sans-serif typeface which is set as default on at least one word processor. Rarely will anything creative be done with this. It will (usually, except in egregious cases) match the impotent attempt at graphic design which has been confined to the empennage and it will have all the charm of a large retail chain’s flyer describing the benefits you’ll definitely totally get if you work for them - sickeningly corporate. Low-cost airlines may slightly vary the theme by putting their website onto the livery, either towards the back or just instead of the airline’s name. The brave will also write it on the ventral fairing, but most don’t even bother with that simple act. Some airlines have their name written in the language spoken in the country they’re based in, usually beside the English text, but most are only in English despite operating in countries where this is not the most widely spoken language. 

Not every livery which has these features is badly designed, as seemingly small changes can make all the difference. There is the occasional livery that fits most, if not all of these features that has some clever tweaks or design choices which makes me actually think it’s fine, acceptable, maybe even decent. (I have taken the initiative of making sure a few of these are among my early posts, just to demonstrate that it can be done). And some airlines depart from this entirely and come up with something even more hideous. Yet I somehow find myself respecting even these more than I do Lufthansa. 

The Corporate Standard Livery Design (Lufthansesque design, if you will) is - and I do not think I am being dramatic at all here - an epidemic. Taxiing through most airports, you sometimes have to actually try to tell the planes parked around you apart in the sea of red, blue, and mostly white. And I spend a lot of time looking at planes.  

These liveries do not only fail to inspire me. They instill in me a profound disgust. They are not trying to be good. They are trying to be what I described earlier - decent, not worth complaining about, because that’s cheaper and easier than designing something good. Graphic design is not anyone’s passion here. They’re just trying to toe the line. They’re so poisoned by the modern minimalist-design brain virus that they don’t realise that to be acceptable a livery this simple needs to do something interesting. There must be a creative decision made somewhere, a compelling feature, or you may as well be flying an MLA-formatted plane. In their striving for adequacy they become not just ambient, but lukewarm. They are a bottle of water which has sat in the sun for so long that when you drink it, even though you’re overheating and parched, it feels only negligibly better than the air you’ve been breathing in. 

To be fair, I do not only hate the Lufthansa paintjob because it exemplifies whatever-ness. Even in an industry saturated with gross in-flight nothingburgers served with some stale biscuits and a paper cup of Lipton tea, Lufthansa manages to offend in specific and unique ways. 

Throughout its long history Lufthansa has had a handful of different liveries, but from 2018 onwards this has been the situation. They’ve never been brilliant, but it’s only gotten worse over time. I normally would commit to a separate post for historical liveries, but in a move that I don’t foresee becoming particularly common I’d like to talk about the history and evolution of Lufthansa’s liveries from the golden age to now - the fall, if you will. 

(image: lufthansa bildarchiv)

Their early liveries were already pretty much plain white or metal, but they still had a few features that made them seem a bit less like photocopy paper which was meant to be printed plain blue but only got through a tenth of the sheet before ink ran out. To begin with, they used a lighter blue and combined it with a vivid yellow to add some actual visual interest. The layering of the yellow over the blue where it curves around and below the nose and on the ends of the tailplane actually draws the eye. The font choice is nice and legible, spaced apart in the center of the fuselage. I imagine it was easy to read even from far away. (Shame it’s a bit blocked by the wings from some angles, though.)

(image: lufthansa bildarchiv)

This early 707 design keeps the cheatlines extending past the nose but makes them sharper than the ones on the Connie to match the sleek profile of the jet. Back when this plane was painted adding white to your plane was a choice rather than the thing everybody was doing, which allows me to respect it for the choice it was instead of considering it the factory default. The bottom half, denoted by the cheatline, is left unpainted, which only adds to the sleekness of the overall profile, and the text is clear and plain but still aesthetically pleasing. The 707 is by modern standards pretty antique-looking; you can take one look at one and tell it isn’t particularly streamlined. This paint scheme, though, makes the plane look sharp and aerodynamic, despite not being revolutionary. I would go so far as to say I like this particular livery. This is, unfortunately, as good as it gets. 

Oh. Oh no...

Let’s assess the damage here. The cheatlines now simply meet at the front without wrapping down to the belly of the plane and the nose is a simple black tip. I like it when airlines paint their planes’ radomes, and I wouldn’t mind it here if not for what it was replacing. The font has been replaced with a generic sans serif font which is closely spaced and put up into a corner, like the name on a homework assignment - it’s not really part of the total package, just there for administrative purposes. Most upsetting to me is the tail. While I wouldn’t say I love the little section on the old plane, it at least felt like it belonged there, creating a second blue-and-yellow layer above the white. Its placement on the fin above where it begins to taper gives the plane a bit of an aerodynamic feel. It’s certainly not changing the world, but it feels at home in the livery. 

The new fin is a sharp downgrade. With nothing to mark the transition the fin abruptly goes from the white of the upper fuselage to a shiny blue which contains an enclave of the only yellow to be found on the entire aircraft. This makes the yellow stand out, as it has nothing to tie it in with the rest of the plane, and the fin itself feels almost like it’s been Frankensteined onto the fuselage from a different plane by a different airline. There’s nothing to mediate the transition from a block of white to a block of blue, like how the cheatline separates white and grey. It just is blue now, stop asking questions. This also means that the only part of the plane that the eye is really drawn to is...the tiny portion of the whole that is the fin, which may as well be floating detached in midair. 

This is foreboding. Knowing what I know now, it feels like looking back at when a romantic partner began to act strange years later, after the divorce, as you walk by the house he bought with his mistress. 

(image: g najberg)

The most recent, and only, time I flew on Lufthansa was in 2014 and was aboard one of their 747-400s. (Actually, if you’d still like to fly on a passenger 747, Lufthansa is basically your only option.) At the time, they looked like this. This is...just sad. They got rid of the cheatlines, because that’s trendy now, and they painted the whole plane white and made an attempt at lip service to the old metal lower half by painting just a bit of the plane grey, like if a human stepped into a puddle of paint that only covered the very sole of their foot. And I’m being generous by showing a 747, a plane which inherently makes any livery look less boring by being interestingly shaped itself, instead of the classic slightly pointy single-decker tube. Not to mention the double-decker design makes the text vertically centered instead of the default Lufthansa look of awkwardly shoved nearly all the way up the fuselage. 

In defense of the modern livery, it’s possible to argue it’s an improvement on this. Honestly, looking at them next to each other, it’s difficult to pick out which one I find less defensible. 

But then you see D-AIDV, an A321 painted in a heritage livery, and you feel the immediate, visceral “no!!! no go back!!!” as you remember that this is a false dichotomy and we could have something so much better if they weren’t peer-pressured into generic modern design. 

And for what? For this?

(image: hvdfonts)

For the third time, I remind you of what we have been reduced to. We have achieved a state of reductio ad absurdum where this barely qualifies as a design. This plane is more or less a white blot. You can put as many insets as you want and it is still a white blot. 

I am relatively sure that the font used is literally Helvetica. EDIT: I have been informed that it is not, in fact, Helvetica, but a custom typeface that happens to look almost exactly like Helvetica. This is, in my own opinion, worse! They did apparently use Helvetica in the past, though. Here is a very detailed description of the design process of the font, which manages to contain a grand total of zero ideas. 

I would hate this on its own already, but it’s also so closely spaced and located so far up that it makes me feel like I’m suffocating. In my own experience as a dyslexic person, kerning is the single weightiest feature when it comes to if I can easily read something or not. While Helvetica, ugly though it may be, is generally considered a very legible font, any benefits from that are more than cancelled out by committing to making sure the entire name of the airline fits between the frontmost two doors with room to spare. It feels almost hostile.

Now, all given, I at least somewhat enjoy the shade of blue used for this livery, which is darker than the normal fare. I do miss the way the grey broke up the endless white space, though, and I mourn the yellow even more - in addition to being something to look at, losing it has also lost any visible reference to the flag of Germany, the country for which Lufthansa is the flag carrier. They don’t even have the black part of the German flag despite that being basically free. If they went for black instead of dark blue I would honestly respect this a hell of a lot more. One of the most recognizable flags in the world and instead your airline looks like a discount SAS.  

Yeah, I said it. If we want to go even further with comparisons by including airlines that aren’t Lufthansa, this is basically the SAS livery. Except not, because the SAS livery does a lot that this doesn’t. 

This is about Lufthansa, not SAS. I’ll look at SAS soon enough, because comparing their look to Lufthansa’s has made me appreciate it in a way I never used to. But I don’t think I need to elaborate too much for it to be clear why SAS’s livery works and Lufthansa’s doesn’t, despite the superficial similarities. SAS took their absolutely horrid previous livery and turned it into something which might not wow anyone but at least feels uniquely theirs, while Lufthansa had something which accomplished much the same and then diluted it into nothingness, Eurowhite writ large. Two washes and you’d wonder if your Lufthansa flight is actually a Smartlynx lease.  

The way that the blue slices into the bottom of the fuselage and doesn’t fully cover the tailfin is...something? It’s a design element. It’s not nearly enough to save it, but it’s a design element. However, this presents another issue specific to Lufthansa’s paint job, best demonstrated with a specific plane: 

(image: lufthansa)

Lufthansa is the world’s largest operator of the Airbus A340, a somewhat eccentric airplane which is perhaps best thought of as a four-engined A330. I love this airplane, and am delighted seeing it overhead on my walk home from work, because Lufthansa is kind enough to operate a daily service with it to my home airport, but that’s beside the point. The point is this: what I have pictured is specifically the A340-600, which is the world’s second longest in-service airliner. Yes, longer than the A380 and the 747-400, and, in fact, only shorter than the 747-800. With a plane this long, the Lufthansa livery creates an incredible look of rear-heaviness. This plane looks like it should uncontrollably pitch up until it’s perpendicular to the ground every time it takes off. Of course this effect is less pronounced on shorter aircraft, but it’s still there, and I dislike it. 

You can barely even tell there’s paint at all on a much smaller plane! And the white bit on the front of the rudder which looks okay on a conventional empennage looks downright horrible when it’s only on the very tip of the t-tail’s forward point. 

Oh, and when you take the windows out for a freighter conversion it gets even worse. 

This is a generic-brand airplane. It genuinely reminds me of generic branding. There is a specific brand that has this exact appearance and I can’t remember what it is but it’s right there and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen it at CVS. I don’t think that’s what you want to go for when designing an airline livery, especially for an airline representing a country, but if Lufthansa wasn’t going for that they’ve failed. 

                  __________________________________________

Overall, Lufthansa’s livery is superbly boring and not terribly well thought out. It’s not worth this absolute dissertation on its own, but I’ve singled it out to complain about general trends, and for that I probably owe it an apology. Said apology is predicated on the fact that it is still a very underwhelming and bad design which could have used a lot more thought. There are a million ways this could have been made decent, and none of them were implemented because that would have taken effort and time and creative vision. I think this post actually required more time and effort than Lufthansa put into designing their planes. 

That said, Lufthansa gets a final grade of D. It’s...bad, it definitely is. There’s the vague flavour of the start of something, like the very distant smell from a barbecue happening three blocks away, but is that really even a redeeming factor? 

No. The second-largest airline in Europe should be able to do better. If I have to stare at rows upon rows of their planes any time I’m at a German airport, they should have the decency to make them interesting to look at. 

[self-loving-vampire]

theres this cohort of transfems that overlaps with the tma/tme discourse who seem to spend all their time reinforcing an intense doomerism and fear of the world that feels very maladaptive to me. its very demoralizing to watch

I think they're definitely sympathetic in that regard, though. If you look through the tag I linked there has definitely been a major reactionary backlash in multiple countries that are increasingly trying to legislate trans people (and GNC people, and others) out of public life entirely. There was even a proposed bill that would have made going out while trans into "obscenity".

I think that's definitely worth being aware of and talking about. I'd just do it with different language and a different framing. To me, the main things to be critical of here are:

1- Essentialist assumptions about gender based on oppositional sexism. The idea that men are inherently one way and women are inherently another way and there can be no overlap, no third categories, no understanding, etc.

These ideas are unfortunately extremely ingrained even in queer people.

2- Cissexist social norms that treat being trans as inherently undesirable. We see this in things like medical gatekeeping that treats letting people transition as a last resort or a failure state. Something to try only after all efforts to make someone cis have failed, if that.

3- General obstacles to bodily autonomy. The idea that you should be able to do what you want with your own body is still considered extreme, especially if you have any kind of disability. People just assume they know what you want better than you do and so they must control your life and your body. I have also mentioned before that trans rights are tied to abortion, disability rights, and more. Attacks on one are often recycled to attack the others.

4- The efforts of specific far-right groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation. A lot of the recent attacks on trans rights (both legal and social) have links to the same handful of wealthy christian conservative organizations, and they also cooperate with transphobic governments abroad.

...And lots of other things.

So there's clearly a lot of substantial barriers to trans rights there, and I think that's important to understand at least on a basic level even if it's scary or depressing. Without that knowledge it is much more difficult to change anything, or even make personal plans about how to navigate the situation.

There's also good news, of course. A lot of the conservative attacks in the US specifically are unpopular and failing, there's legal challenges on the way regarding the recent situation in the UK, various anti-trans groups involved in crafting this legislation have been officially designated as hate groups, and generally as trans people have become a normal part of people's lives acceptance has somewhat increased even if panic among the right also has.

But there's still dangers to be aware of and prepared for, and the hate has been so overt and extreme since forever that it's hard to blame people for being so wary. Like, I am someone who had to become an international refugee because of transphobia so I know it can really be a sort of nightmare situation. I only survived it by making precise plans and deceiving dangerous people.

[decolonize-the-everything]

Hi, non American invested in your election here (it will inevitably have consequences in my life even if it'll take a few years to manifest so). I have a question regarding jasmine sherman - what is their stance on Ukraine (specifically on the money the US sends to Ukraine) as well as on NATO?

So far the only source I've found says that they want NATO to be abolished and for the US to stop sending defence funds to Ukraine, both of which seem like absurd propositions to me. (As they would invariable help in Russia's ongoing crusade to genocide/subjugate/take over Ukraine and potentially other eastern European and Caucasian (in the caucasus region) countries)

I hope the source I read is wrong, because otherwise the implications of jasmine's stances are concerning to me. Hope to see you respond soon

Foreign Aid:

When aid is offered, it will be of a type which the country in question has requested. If aid is undesired, it is not aid; it is imposition. Moving forward, to the best of our ability we are providing our global neighbors with the outreach and support they truly want (rather than what we’ve decided for them), because what is good for our allies is good for our nation. Foreign Aid will be designed to empower countries to grow on their own, towards their own future. If the USA is involved in developing laws in other countries, respect for human rights and equal opportunities will be of primary importance. Science based information will be used to inform all decisions regarding the specific nature, quantity, and delivery of aid. When offering aid, we will take measures to ensure that the aid is provided with sustainability in mind. Short term aid will still be provided, but a higher emphasis will be placed on aid with longevity that is placed in the hands of our allies. Energy facilities which we build for and with our allies will be sustainable and renewable energy sources, provided solely for the benefit of the country, not for our government’s gain off the lives and backs of those we claim to be helping, and the energy provided by these installations should be available to the population equitably

Democracy and Influence

Each country has the right to determine their own government and future. As with aid, we will only be assisting in establishing foreign governments in ways invited by that foreign nation’s people. The USA will no longer fund programs which are designed to violently inject our version of democracy into a foreign government. Self determination is paramount. Legal systems we influence should aim in the direction of a right to life, a right to peaceful assembly, a right to education, a right to security, and a right to a clean and healthy environment. Available healthcare, education accessibility, and science funding should also be included in our preferences when invited to offer guidance to developing, reforming, and restructuring government systems of allied nations.

International Community:

The USA has too long occupied a solipsistic position, separated, and acting above the other nations of the world. Our position must be one of equality with the other leaders of the world, not superiority. We must listen to the needs and the successes of our global, international community, in order to serve our own nation and strengthen those around us.

Our performance and respectability as a nation, when participating in NATO, the UN, and other international assemblies must improve. We must show our desire for diplomacy in actions and words, within and beyond such assemblies and summits.

Disputes:

The USA has been losing favor in the international community for some time by being short-fused and destructive, and by inserting ourselves into conflicts to which we were uninvited, unwanted, and ultimately detrimental to both ourselves and external conflicting states in a multitude of cases. It’s time we work on ourselves as a nation.

At present, our citizens are not equipped to interact with the global community. We need to be more inviting to visiting residents of our allied countries, as well as our immigrant communities. This means reducing biases and discriminatory practices against those for whom English is not their first language.

While education programs are important, our own education system is failing, and so we will not be taking it upon ourselves to educate the rest of the world. In the event that educational aid is requested, we will look to our allies who already have such organizations in place, with a better system of education than we may boast at this time.

We will be closing international military bases, and protecting our country while supporting our troops, by bringing them home. We will no longer be inserting ourselves into external conflicts in the hope of profiting. We will only get involved in foreign conflict in ways which will benefit all, namely by providing foreign aid.

In disputes which directly target the USA and its citizens, we guarantee we will follow the Geneva Convention, as well as strict deescalation directives. We must show the world we are ready for, and capable of peace.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Despite FDA recommendations Florida Surgeon General Ladapo warns against new COVID booster - Published Sept 13, 2024

By C. A. Bridges

The summer COVID-19 surge continues, with nearly half the country reporting "very high" levels of COVID activity as measured by wastewater data, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The new COVID vaccine is now available at CVC and Walgreens and through clinics and healthcare providers. With the release of the vaccine, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is urging everyone to stay up to date... with information about how dangerous it is.

In a statement Thursday with the title, "Updated Guidance for COVID-19 Boosters for the Fall and Winter 2024–2025 Season," the Florida Department of Health repeated the same arguments against mRNA COVID shots that Ladapo used when he recommended against their use in January, saying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not provide an adequate response to his questions regarding the drugs' safety.

"Based on the high rate of global immunity and currently available data, the State Surgeon General advises against the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines," the FDOH statement said.

The FDA's response to Ladapo in December rebutted each of his concerns, warning that vaccine "misinformation and disinformation" would result in fewer people getting vaccinated, which contributes to the "continued death and serious illness toll of COVID-19."

COVID-19 rates in Florida In Florida, cases for August dropped from last year's numbers, with 62,038 reported cases this year compared to 91,941 in August 2023. Both numbers are almost certainly low as many people self-test at home and some may have it and never test at all.

Deaths from COVID were on par with last year, however, with 828 last August compared to 877 in 2023. The average death total for the four months prior this year was 265.

So far 8.2 million Floridians have been infected with COVID-19 at least once, according to FDOH data, and 97,250 have died.

Ladapo says vaccine won't protect against new strains despite FDA assurances Along with a lengthy list of concerns over the effectiveness and health risks of mRNA vaccines and boosters, the FDOH statement warned that "this booster does not protect against the currently dominant strain, accounting for approximately 37% of infections in the United States" and said that the vaccine was approved without specific trials in humans.

The FDA said in a release that the updated vaccines granted an emergency use authorization for distribution this fall were designed to target the KP.2 strain but also "more closely target currently circulating variants and provide better protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death."

As of the latest CDC's Nowcast data tracker, which displays COVID-19 estimates and projections for two-week periods, the Omicron KP.3.1.1 variant accounted for 52.7% of positive infections between Sept. 1 and Sept. 14, followed by KP.2.3 at 12.2%, with LB.1 at 10.9% and KP.3 at 10.6%.

“These updated vaccines meet the agency’s rigorous, scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality," said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. "Given waning immunity of the population from previous exposure to the virus and from prior vaccination, we strongly encourage those who are eligible to consider receiving an updated COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that everyone ages 6 months and older receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine to protect against the potentially serious outcomes of COVID-19 for this fall and winter season.

Ladapo's history of COVID vaccine criticism September 2021: Within a day of being hired, Ladapo signed new rules allowing parents to decide if children exposed to COVID could go to school anyway, eliminating the previous requirement for exposed students to quarantine off campus for at least four days.

October 2021: Ladapo appeared at DeSantis' side in public appearances, supporting the governor's views on blocking vaccine and mask mandates and accusing the public health community of fearmongering. Critics accused him of spreading misinformation that led to people being hesitant or afraid of vaccines. A firestorm of criticism erupted after Ladapo refused to wear a mask around Democratic state Sen. Tina Polsky even after she told him she had a serious medical condition (later confirmed as breast cancer) and was at a higher risk for serious complications from COVID.

December 2021: The Florida Department of Health rejected a complaint about Ladapo that said he violated state medical laws by publicly casting doubts about COVID vaccines and promoting unproven treatments.

January 2022: At a press conference, DeSantis and Ladapo told Floridians who weren't showing symptoms not to get tested. “If you don’t have symptoms, you are not a case," Ladapo said, in defiance of CDC and virologist recommendations.

June 2022: DeSantis and the FDOH, under Ladapo, refused to pre-order COVID-19 vaccines for children under five when they became available, the only U.S. state to do so, citing the lack of need and the risks. Ladapo appeared before Congress to defend the state's decision and said the state didn't recommend vaccines for children under 18.

October 2022: Ladapo urged men younger than 40 to avoid the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccine and booster shots because of the "abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group," citing an anonymous non-peer-reviewed analysis from the FDOH. The move prompted a backlash from doctors, researchers and the federal government. At the time, Florida was leading the country in COVID deaths for the third month in a row.

January 2023: A task force of University of Florida medical school doctors concluded that the FDOH recommendation against COVID vaccines for young men was of “highly questionable merit" and that Ladapo cherry-picked data to support his stance. Politico went further and, after examining different drafts of the analysis, reported that Ladapo had personally changed the study to remove data that contradicted his views. Ladapo has denied this.

March 2023: In response to a letter from Ladapo demanding answers based on his own research on vaccine safety, the FDA and CDC asked him to stop disproportionally focusing on the small number of adverse effects in the studies of 13 billion COVID shots given around the world while ignoring the number of people the vaccines have saved.

April 2023: The FDOH under Ladapo stopped reporting COVID infections and deaths to the federal government September 2023: Ladapo recommended against anyone under the age of 65 getting the new COVID-19 vaccine booster the FDA approved to combat new, more infectious variants, directly contradicting CDC guidance. He claimed that the mRNA boosters altered human DNA, which the CDC and multiple studies have said is false.

November 2023: After a two-year battle over COVID public records, the FDOH under Ladapo settled a lawsuit about withholding COVID data and released information spanning the entire duration of the pandemic on the state's FLHealthCHARTS.gov site. However, the agency also stopped providing cumulative totals, percentages, new case positivity, data on booster doses and overviews that made it easier to see trends.

January 2024: Ladapo made headlines again by "calling for a halt to the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines" because he said he didn't receive an adequate response from the FDA about the safety of vaccines. Meanwhile, Florida was seeing a spike in new COVID cases and hospitalizations.

[mariacallous]

Earlier this month, a German court ruled that the country’s nationalist far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), was potentially “extremist” and could warrant surveillance by the country’s intelligence apparatus.

Campaign ads placed by AfD have been allowed to appear on Facebook and Instagram anyway, according to a new report from the nonprofit advocacy organization Ekō, shared exclusively with WIRED. Researchers found 23 ads from the party that accrued 472,000 views on Facebook and Instagram and appear to violate Meta’s own policies around hate speech.

The ads push the narrative that immigrants are dangerous and a burden on the German state, ahead of the European Union’s elections in June.

One ad placed by AfD politician Gereon Bollmann asserts that Germany has seen “an explosion of sexual violence” since 2015, specifically blaming immigrants from Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The ad was seen by between 10,000 and 15,000 people in just four days, between March 16 and 20. Another ad, which had more than 60,000 views, features a man of color lying in a hammock. Overlaid text reads, “AfD reveals: 686,000 illegal foreigners live at our expense!”

Ekō was also able to identify at least three ads that appear to have used generative AI to manipulate images, though only one was run after Meta put its manipulated media policy into place. One shows a white woman with visible injuries, with accompanying text saying “the connection between migration and crime has been denied for years.”

“Meta, and indeed other companies, have very limited ability to detect third-party tools that generate AI imagery,” says Vicky Wyatt, senior campaign director at Ekō. “When extremist parties use those tools with their ads, they can create incredibly emotive imagery that can really move people. So it's incredibly worrying.”

In its submission to the European Commission's consultation on election guidelines, obtained by a freedom of information request made by Ekō, Meta says “it is not yet possible for providers to identify all AI-generated content, particularly when actors take steps to seek to avoid detection, including by removing invisible markers.”

Meta’s own policies prohibit ads that “claim people are threats to the safety, health, or survival of others based on their personal characteristics” and ads that “include generalizations that state inferiority, other statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt, expressions of dismissal, expressions of disgust, or cursing based on immigration status.”

“We do not allow hate speech on our platforms and have Community Standards that apply to all content—including ads,” says Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts. “Our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live, and this system is one of many we have in place to protect European elections.” Roberts told WIRED the company plans to review the ads flagged by Ekō but didn’t respond to questions about whether the German court’s designation of the AfD as potentially extremist would invite further scrutiny from Meta.

Targeted ads, says Wyatt, can be powerful because extremist groups can more effectively target people that might sympathize with their views and “use Meta’s ads library to reach them.” Wyatt also says this allows the group to test which messages are more likely to resonate with voters.

The AfD has a long history of portraying immigrants as a threat to the Germany. In January, German media reported that the AfD had secretly met with members of neo-Nazi groups to discuss expelling immigrants from the country, or what they dubbed “re-migration.” Ekō found that some of the ads placed by the AfD included the hashtag #remigration.

Experts say that social platforms, particularly Facebook, have been integral to the AfD’s growth. “Facebook was their main platform from the beginning,” says Juan Carlos Medina Serrano, a former researcher at the Bavarian School of Public Policy, who studied the rise of the AfD’s presence online. “It's hard to get into German politics. There have been other right-wing parties before the 2010s, and the AfD is the only one that made it to being one of the main parties in recent elections.”

Because they were not platformed by traditional media, the AfD invested heavily in social media, says Serrano. “They have been very adept at designing polarizing content that goes viral.”

In a 2021 interview with DW, the party’s own press officer said that Facebook had been integral to the party’s success: “Without Facebook, I don't believe that the AfD could have become successful so quickly.” The party has also seen recent success on TikTok, where Medina says its message has resonated with younger voters.

In February, Meta published a blog post outlining its plans for the EU elections. But last month, the EU announced that it was investigating Meta for potentially violating the Digital Services Act and not doing enough to combat election-related disinformation.

“Companies cannot be trusted and are completely unreliable in enforcing their own self-governance rules,” says Aurel Eschmann, campaigner at LobbyControl, a German civil society organization that promotes transparency in elections. “Particularly if there's a conflict of interest with the content that generates the most activity, they will be unwilling to ban that sort of content.”

Experts worry that allowing entities like the AfD to push divisive ads and organic content on social media is helping to accelerate the rise of the antidemocratic far right across the EU.

“I definitely think that the platforms have failed to understand their impact on society, on how this content is transforming the whole European electorate,” says Serrano. But, he says, now that the AfD is an established part of the German government, it makes it difficult for any platform to ban it, despite its use of hate speech or anti-immigration rhetoric. “They cannot completely ban a political party, but they should be able to moderate it.”

[cospinol]

who is your most Knight character

SO it actually is not anymede! she's got definitely got a lot of knight Things going on (strong moral code, serious dedication to her combat prowess, specific military position she aspires to fulfill above all else, a Lady To Protect) but her code/values are based very entirely on internal feelings/instincts rather than an external system and her desire for martial glory is very far-reaching; the way she operates is a lot more open and independent than what i would consider a knight's sense of chivalry and her actual ambition is a lot broader/more ambitious. she's aiming a lot higher than knighthood, so i think the proper designation for her is actually 'hero'! my most knight character is definitely luma..

lulu is extremely invested in chivalry itself and in achieving glory by Doing Things Right, and she believes strongly in theory and in adherence to codes as written; though she is a flexible thinker (to the point where she sees no issue with insubordination towards a superior who isn't properly fulfilling responsibilities as dictated by that code) it's ultimately (and certainly a little romantically) the specific responsibilities of her position as knight of the empire that's the most important thing in the world to her.

meanwhile any is a little rough around the edges, self-taught in most subjects, and (although she takes her work/training itself very seriously) generally kind of lacking in respect for authority except where it's been earned one-on-one ^_^ her updated lore is that she grew up a long way from rhea, as a household servant in the secluded back-country manor of its prince-in-sort-of-exile; he's around her age and the two of them have been close their entire lives. just before the start of hbtw, he's summoned back to the capital by his father and any sets off on her own separate journey there, to fulfill the silly promise they'd made as children to win absolute glory there/achieve absolute strength by joining the famed ranks of its generals; when io first meets her at the beginning of hbtw, she's competing in a small-town fighting ring on the road to rhea in order to earn travel funds!

[bios-hzrd]

Just wanted to write this down before I forget. There’s this interesting trend I see a lot in Nintendo games where you have the player do something intuitive, and reveal something more strategic that may have been a bit less so.

Wario Land has a bit where you ground pound on a block, and when you land, a nearby enemy with a spiked shell flips over onto their soft belly.

Donkey Kong Country Returns introduces a mechanic wheee if you crouch and shake the controller, you can blow out some air. This is done on a bunch of dandelions. Later it has a little challenge where you blow on a dandelion while dodging an enemy on fire. But when you blow out the dandelion, the flaming enemy goes out too.

But I think the most interesting and subtle version of this trick isn’t in a Nintendo game at all. I’m fairly certain I don’t have to introduce Plants vs Zombies or the Potato Mine, but I will explain the mechanics and strategy.

Potato Mine is pretty blatantly an early game utility plant and very little else. You unlock it at the beginning of the game, and it’s a very cheap minion that kills a single target, but needs to sit on the field a bit to activate.

When you initially get it, you want to try it out. A zombie shambles onto the field, and it’s pretty much the only offensive plant you can afford. Because of the arm time, you place it to the far left of the field, where the zombie will take a long time to get to. While you wait, you place down some sunflowers, and you’re already engaging with one of the games strategies.

More zombies only spawn when the current wave has been eliminated. Earlier waves are smaller, so you can wait and still take them out safely close to base. If you stall the earlier waves, you can build a bigger defense.

(I personally like going in the opposite direction and making the game as difficult as possible with a rushdown strategy based around chompers, garlic, and marigold)

Its utility is very limited to teach you how to play, until the game feels confident enough to give you a more versatile option (squash). Being able to swap it out later on allows the developers to make it an incredibly specific teaching tool that does nothing but what you want the player to do with it.

The main thing that’s missing though is an indicator of what the player did. It does make it easier on the player, but without anything to directly show them exactly what they did, like showing them what happens if you load the instakill at the front line, I don’t think they’re likely to keep doing it once you take the training wheels off.

I said it was interesting and subtle, not that it was perfect game design.

[invested-in-your-future]

Ironwood should have never been the villain

Hot take but I disagree.

I think Ironwood is perfect antagonist to showcase how fallible and flawed humanity can be. He is well meaning and he genuinely believes in his mission and goals and the idea of Greater Good. But he's also someone who grew up in post-world-war times in a country that's 100% was the bad guy before and is in quite a fickle state. Its no wonder he would strive to be better and desperately try to prove himself, even at the cost of his own wellbeing (oh look the theme of self sacrifice again and the toxic notion of "heroism" based upon society's expectations). Writing him as rigid by-the-book General that is willing to do whatever is necessary to keep the fragile peace going makes 100% sense. But inability to change and improvise should also be his flaw - while Ironwood sees threats that Ozpin is blind to, Ironwood genuinely does not realize the consequences and issues Ozpin sees in him.

I am of opinion that he was always intended to eventually "cross the line" and do something genuinely bad out of desperation and circumstance. The type of person that, when situation goes completely out of his control, would end up with him making decisions that are hard or impossible to come back from. A tragic case of a good intentions leading to worst decisions. A case study of human nature and the effect division, desperation and self destructive impulses can have upon it. And a thematic allusion of the real world's tendency to abandon war veterans and soldiers to their personal hell with no regard for their mental or physical wellbeing, after their country exploited them to the ultimate limit.

The issue however, just like with pretty much EVERYTHING in the show, is absolutely ZERO ACTUAL PROGRESSION. Its true for character relationships - Yang and Blake never actually getting to solve the issues that have been brewing since V3. Its true for characterization - Yang, Blake, Ruby, Weiss - all of them basically were given less than breadcrumbs so far rather than proper character writing - it took YEARS to acknowledge that Ruby might be traumatized and even that ended up with writing off trauma and character progression as NOT NEEDED "YOU ARE FLAWLESS" nonsense and Yang still has pretty much ZERO development in terms of her trauma (And Blake literally exists only as character design). It extends to the world itself too - time in Remnant only seems to move when there's a screentime given to a location - Come Volume 20, Glynda will still be vaguely standing around Vale and Mistral will still be exactly identical place as the team left it.

So its no surprise that that's true for character alignment too - Summer is either Best Mother Ever or Filthy Dishonest Liar, Raven is either uwusadregrets or Worst Mother Ever How Dare She. Even Salem is not immune to this as she literally has TWO phases of her backstory - "omg caring wife" and "I literally want to murder the entire world out of spite", with the awful flashback episode flipping the switch INSTANTLY between the two states. And that's true for Ironwood - there's no character arc. There's no actual genuine exploration of "road to hell is paved with good intentions", there's no moral conundrum. There's just a flip of the switch as plot demands. Its a Game of Thrones-esque situation where the writers wanted to do specific thing with the character but kind of forgot to do the reasonable build-up, so it just happens. THE BELLLLLLLLLS.

What I think should have happened is that Salem's stupid fortress of DOOM or relics or Cinder or Salem's Evil Troupe of Evil should have never played a role in Fall of Atlas. It should have been ALL Internal. Just Kingdom of Atlas imploding in on itself as consequence of Fall of Beacon and the worsening situation in the world. Make Atlas story arc ALL ABOUT power plays within Atlas, with different people having wildly different ideas on where to actually aim the army at and different characters having different ideas on how to bring back order to destabilized country. Just have the team be stuck in a situation that is few steps away from world war with different ways provided to solve it. In the end, lines are crossed and Atlas falls apart from it's own sense of self-importance, grandeur, paranoia, classism and nationalism and Ironwood, misguided and tragic, falls with the country he sacrificed everything for. The lead cast are left to wonder whether there was any other way to resolve this, but they'll never know. In this situation, willingly or unwillingly, they played the role of being the ones at the center of a Kingdom falling apart. What do they do now? Where do they go from here? Does each of them question actions that led them to this point in time? Do all of them arrive at the same conclusion?

I think to sell this its important to have Salem side to NEVER lift even a finger. The Story of Fall of Atlas is the story of division of humanity and Salem's side already did all they need to do with Beacon for that. Humanity are the ones that, as lyrics go, train their heroes and build their armies, and then with single moment, single event, they turn on each other and burn.

[polynomialpandemic]

A Sun That's Rising- partial redesigns!

As we've been writing STR, I've had the uncontrollable urge to worldbuild (map coming soon), and after speaking with a diversity consultant about designs and how appropriate accuracy to existing cultural clothing vs fantasy world=not the same culture and not wanting to misrepresent, I have started the STR character designs! One notable change is Wind's hair color, but aside from that it fits completely appropriately into EOS.

(Also, I have been picturing them as inspired by these cultures and of these races and appearances since I wrote EOS, this is just me getting the confidence/go-ahead to make their clothing more culturally accurate)

Here's the rough designs I have so far! (for EOS folks- this does contain the STR characters as well, so just. uh. know those guys exist, there shouldn't be any spoilers in here though so dont worry about that. Of the canon chain/EOS guys I've only properly designed 3 so far, but I do have concept sketches for Hyrule as well based on what part of the story he's in, so that's cool. These are also labeled (sometimes) for your convenience. I am mixing real life time periods a bit, but that's Fine, I did want everyone to be '''appropriately''' clothed (i.e. wearing enough clothing that nobody gets uncomfortable, as nudity tends to be sexualized in western culture) so that meant futzing around with eras a bit hahah. Also, reminder that many of these characters are adopted, and therefore I'm not just going 'boom he's south american because thats fun', Ihave thought through the distance and cultural exchange between countries and the origins of their bio families and stuff.

ANYWAYS

WIND!

Wind's design is inspired by Peruvian traditional clothing. The sandals have an extra ref, as I added them to the design later.

TWI!

Twilight's design, like Malon's, is inspired by Indigenous Turtle Island (american) cultures, specifically those located in the plains areas. He is Malon and Time's bio kid.

MALON!

Malon the beloved! As Jingle Dresses are ceremonial, I took some inspiration from them, but am not recreating one, because they are connected to the spirituality and ritual of Indigenous culture in real life, and those cultures and the ones in the story are not the same.

SHADOW!

Here's Shadow in Ao Dai! As I've determined that (specifically East) Hyrule(the country) has partially Chinese cultural inspirations (and is where Castle Town lies,) Shadow's design fits with West Hyrule's culture, which is inspired by Vietnamese culture. I also checked the meaning of colors of clothing and period appropriate dyes, so there's that :D

GROOSE!

As of now, none of you have met Groose in canon, but I Love Them So Much. Inspired by Norwegian cultural clothing.

me: [looks at Groose Skyward Sword] but what if you were a they/them lesbian-

AND HERE'S THE HYRULE THUMBNAIL SKETCHES!

Filipino cultural inspiration for him! Yes, I gave him skirts as well as tunics. They are more interesting (to me) than pants.

NOTE: I will not be explicitly naming all of the clothing items as they are named in real life, when writing the fic. Since 'Tagalog' is the name of an Austronesian language, Hyrule could not wear something called a 'Barong Tagalog,' if Tagalog did not exist in the world.

I'll add on more characters as I sketch them, but I am, as always, pretty busy. I'll go ahead and post the maps next, and then some picrews I did as well, so you all can get a sense of their faces.

[introvertedlass]

Hi, I hope you don’t mind me sharing a controversial opinion here.

You might post this and that’s fine but I just wanted to share my opinion.

I would like to point out that I am someone who leans heavily that this is PR because there are to many inconsistencies that don’t add up to this being a real relationship. And what I am about to say is really just a thought based on Talk and observations I have seen.

So, in my opinion, I don’t believe the thought process of “he signed this thinking his fans will back him up no matter what”

I feel like these things are far more complex and this is just another way for many fans to justly their anger because there is no for us to know that this is the complete truth.

Could he have signed this and disregarded his fans and how they will used in this? Probably yes. But we can’t say that it’s a 100% fact when we don’t have all the other variables in the equation.

I personally feel like there are too many variables here to consider first before we get to this point. And I know to many I am sounding like I am making excuses, but I will say it again, we don’t know many things that have happened/are happening behind the scenes.

Please remember that I am believe this is PR and is a contract so my thought process may not match yours

One of the things to consider, was this a new contact designed for this specific situation/future projects/current projects or was this part of his employment contract that was disregarded previous and now being used? Or is this part of an old pricey contract he signed and was unaware of?

Another thing, what were the terms discussed, if they were ever. What I mean is, when he signed what were the things he was told about the situation/contract.

If this is a new contract, then He must have been negotiating for something right? Was the PR situation upfront on the table or was this added later when he was so close just to push him to say yes, or did he say yes under the impression this is a simple one time thing? Was this properly negotiated or was he simply leaving everything for other people to do and all he was focused on was the end?

Because here is thing, and no offence to those with sources, but there is no way he signed a contract with the presence of his team there. Which makes me think he was might have been misled about the terms. I am pretty sure that after so many year with his agency he would trust them when they present him with a contract and he simply signs without reading. But I don’t believe he could go to another country and sign a contract without the knowledge of lawyer and representation.

Was any of this pre approved or was this, play as you go type of situation? For example, was there a general plan that was agreed to, or was this a step by step plan?

First this happens, and then that happens and so on. Or was this just them going “we need an announcement, how about we do this” and then doing it.

I am going to stop here because I think I made my point.

I would also like to add another thing, if we can to start accusing him of doing something we need to all call out other who do them as well, because I feel like people are simply trying to be mean and not fair at this point. He is not the only personal in the industry that uses fans, they all.

Because here is the thing, Hollywood and talent agencies, they are all disgusting and have absolutely no morals. Just remember there are still many harvey weinstein and jeffrey epstein in this industry. And they all turn a blind eye until they can’t.

If we are want to call him out, you need to call all of them out for their hypocrisy. Otherwise you are nothing but a performative activist, who will select who to call out based how hurt you are.

He might be part of the problem but he is not the whole problem, there plenty of problematic actors who have done worse things and they are doing better than him. If you really want to change the way things are and want to call the hypocrisy and unfairness that you feel. You hold him accountable for his actions but you also call out other with the same behaviour, don’t over look them because they are better actor or have better careers and didn’t hurt you. That’s not how calling for change works.

Sorry for the long essay.

Anon

[paradoxcase]

Hey, who remembers when I used to post language geekery and made a whole conlang for the Homestuck trolls?  I know that was a literal decade ago. but I’m starting to think sort of semi-seriously about picking up an old worldbuilding project with some unwritten stories attached to it.  I dusted off a conlang that I actually still quite like and plan to do some more work on it.  So, I may start posting about this language here, and possibly may write a story that’s connected to the conculture it goes with.  Here is what I have of it so far.

The Doylist history of this conlang is that I was reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a very long time ago, and got to the part where there’s a paragraph where a bunch of time travel shenanigans are described in the most confusing way possible using some novel combinations of English modal verbs.  And I thought: I bet if time travellers existed in the real world, they would have a language that was specifically designed for making it easy to talk about time travel.  What would that language look like?  And I decided the best way to do it would be to mark tense on the nouns.  When all of your nouns can be different tenses, it’s easy to talk about things that are at different points in their personal timelines relative to you in the same sentence or as part of the same action.  This is also super useful for talking about other kinds of regular actions that don’t require everything involved to be colocated, and thus can span several temporal locations even without time travel.  For example, “I don’t like the way you used to be” is an action that involves a present tense participant and a past tense participant.  With a language that marks tense on the nouns, you could write this as “I-PRES don’t like you-PAST”, and it takes exactly as many words to say as “I don’t like you”, and the same is true for any combination of participants and tenses, some of which can get quite wordy in English.

The Watsonian history of this conlang is that it was created in-universe as a conlang by the all-female priesthood of a Goddess who had given them the power of time travel in order to get their society, the Cheanya, out of a tight spot where they would have all been killed by a neighboring culture.  (Or, that’s what they say happened, anyway.)  The priesthood carefully polices the use of time travel and the technology required to do it, but frequently use it themselves and can also use the technology to audio- and video-chat across times and timelines.  So, they needed an artificial language that wouldn’t change over time with which to talk to priestesses at other points in time, that they could use to talk about time travel.  The language, like the time travel technology, is a closely guarded secret of the priesthood.  It’s not a language anybody actually speaks natively, although it would have been based on the native language of the creator back when it was invented.  The country this takes place in is on a large island about 1/3 the size of Australia in the southern hemisphere, between two the two sides of a much larger continent that actually goes over the south pole and continues halfway up the other side of the world.  The language is called QuCheanya, which technically means “the people’s language” or “the Cheanya’s language”, but this is of course just a bit of propaganda since the vast majority of the Cheanya people do not actually speak it.

The language has 25 consonants and 14 vowels and diphthongs, but only allows CV syllables, which works out to exactly 350 possibly syllables, a couple hundred more than Japanese.  It has obstruents in four places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, velar, and uvular, and five series’ of such obstrunts: voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives, and voiceless affricates at all four PoAs, and palatalized voiceless stops and palatalized voiceless fricatives at the non-uvular PoAs.  It has bilabial, alveolar, and palatal nasals, alveolar and palatal laterals approximants, /r/, and /j/.  For vowels, it has a basic set of six monopthongs, which are the standard five vowels plus a phonemic schwa.  Then it has a series of four diphthongs ending in /i/, and a series of four diphthongs ending in /ə/.  Altogether this is:

with the romanization written on the right hand side.  Stress is always on the penult, if the word is four or more syllables long there will be a secondary stress on the preantepenult.  All of the voiceless obstruents are voiced intervocalically, which is where they are all of the time that they are not the first sound in the word, due to phonotactic constraints.

The writing system is a syllabary, which is the usual way that writing systems work in this part of the conworld.  Each character consists of a square frame which indicates by its shape the PoA of the onset of the syllable, to which can be attached diacritics indicating affrication and palatalization.  The interior of the character is not featurial.  The character can be followed by diacritics indicating a diphthong.  Some characters have possible variants.

The frames are written in red ink above - this is how writing is done traditionally, for official purposes.  There are different styles - you can make all of the frames red, just the ones at the beginnings of words, or just the ones at the beginnings of sentences.  Naturally, it’s a big pain in the ass and it’s not done unless this piece of writing is going to be kept around for a while.  However, since the language is basically proprietary property of the priesthood, it’s mostly used for official studies and research and documents done by the priestesses, and not so much used for everyday things like shopping lists anyway.

This is a largely head-last language with most of the morphology on the nouns.  It would probably be classified as SOV, although it’s more correct to say it is Topic-Focus-Verb.  Quantifiers and numbers precede adjectives precede nouns, adverbs (which are identical to adjectives except that they modify verbs) precede verbs, postpositions follow their objects.  The one head-first part of the language is that there are a few nominal compounds that are head-first, like for example QuCheanya as mentioned above.  However, these compounds are not very productive.

Nouns are marked for case, number, and tense. 

Tense is indicated by a single consonant: q for past tense, c for present tense, and p for future tense.  Tense strictly refers to the noun’s progress along its personal timeline, as opposed to the global world timeline.  The global world timeline is generally referenced using nouns referring to particular days/dates/times or just generally “past” or “future” in the locative case, however, there are special tenses that are used if an object is in the past or future of its timeline relative to the speaker, but is not in the past/future of the global timeline relative to the speaker.  Say, if you time travel into the past from a future point, you as you were before the time travel is in the past of your own personal timeline, but in the future of the global timeline.  So in this case you would, instead of using q to indicate past tense, use qqh to indicated “past displaced” tense, and in the reverse case would use pf to indicate “future displaced” tense.  The displaced tenses can also be used somewhat more laxly in most situations where an object or a person is considered to be in the “wrong” temporal position for what it should be due to time travel - this is naturally fairly subjective.

If the noun is the topic of the sentence, it always appears first in the sentence regardless of its role, obligatorily marks tense, and then has the topic ending -ei (singular) or -eya (plural) following the tense consonant.  For every other noun in the sentence, tense marking is optional, and leaving it off indicates that it has the same tense as the topic noun.  For non-topic nouns, the optional tense is a syllable consisting of the tense consonant followed by -a, which is followed by a case-and-number marking syllable, which is one of the following:

The nominative singular is unmarked.  Plurals always end in -a, nominatives ending in -e -i -o or -u add -a to form a diphthong, words ending in -ä change the -ä into an -a, words ending in diphthongs of the form -Vi transform into -Vya, and words already ending in -a do not change.  Nominative is for subjects, accusative for direct objects, dative for indirect objects.  Alienable genitive is marked on the possessor noun (which precedes the unmarked possessed noun) and is used for things that are alienably possessed, such as belongings and more abstract things such as thoughts and ideas.  Inalienable genitive is used for inalienably possessed things, such as body parts and family members.  Locative is used generally to mean “in/at/on” for both physical places and temporal “places”, and also with objects of postpositions indicating location in space or time, oblique is used with the objects of all other postpositions.

Pronouns are inflected for case and number.  If a tense needs to be used with a pronoun, the tense syllable (tense consonant plus -a) precedes the pronoun.

So “you” (singular) as the topic, in the present tense, would be written as “ca pfei”.

Verbs are generally invariant, although there are many verbs that are formed by prefixing a postposition onto the front of a verb to change its meaning, similar to how this happens in Latin with prepositions.

There are, however, two particles that can come after the verb in a sentence - an aspect-marking particle and a future relevance particle.  There are two possible aspect particles, sei, marking habitual aspect, and cä, marking perfective.  Unmarked sentences with no particle are by default in progressive aspect.  The future relevant particle is rui, which is actually identical in form to the postposition meaning “from”.  This is used to indicate that the action has relevance to a (relative) future time, and can be used in similar situations to English constructions like “I have finished eating”, which is different than “I finished eating” in that implies something about the present state of things, or “I will have finished eating” which is a future action that has relevance to a further future time.  It can also be used with present actions deemed relevant to the near future.

Verbs that take clauses as complements (think, want, say, know, etc.) are simply put after the clause, with no modification to the previous verb.  The two sentence ending particles mentioned above cannot, however, be used with a verb that is part of such a complement clause.  When the complementized verb is yai, the general placeholder verb that usually means “be”, “exist”, “do”, or “happen”, depending on context, yai is simply deleted.

I did some of the Conlang Test Sentences that were posted a long time ago on the Zompist BBoard in this language.  The full list of sentences is here: https://cofl.github.io/conlang/resources/mirror/conlang-syntax-test-cases.html - I will probably do more of these later as I continue to flesh out the conlang.  Here are the first 22, with interlinear glosses, to give you a practice demonstration of how the language works:

tira is an adjective/adverb that means “near”, but in a temporal sense.  With a future tense noun it means “soon”, with a past tense noun it means “recent/ly”, and with present tense it means “right now”.  It’s related to a similar adjective/adverb tile, which means “near”, but spacially.

sisiane is a partial reduplication of siane.  QuCheanya has some limited partial reduplication in closed-class word categories.

nyu- is a diminutive that is usually used to form words for baby animals.  Here in sentence 17, ninyu- is a partial reduplication of it to mean a little baby animal.

Here we have tira meaning “soon”, and qhoi taking a sentence complement (except the verb was yai, so it was deleted).

[housegrouch]

July 2nd, early morning

I've decided to use this blog as a journal part-time whenever I have something on my chest I need to get rid of.

For the past 8 months (before May), I was a student in a course-based graduate program. I made a friend on orientation day in September, and we quickly became what I would call best friends. We talked on campus every day, and we had the same classes because our program was designed that way. I was glad that I had made a friend so quickly after moving to that city because I'm introverted and autistic and making friends doesn't come easily to me.

In May, we all split up to start our respective research placements for the summer. Almost all of us were doing them at different places, but most of us were doing them in a specific region. I am one of the students who is doing their placement quite far from the others - across the country, in fact. The last time we all hung out was at a potluck that I organized for our class back in April. At this potluck, my best friend told me (while tipsy) that she considered us best friends, the type that stay friends for years and years. I was glad that she'd said that, and so happy to be her friend. I haven't had that many friends in my life, and I've been bullied before by people who I'd previously called my friends. Before we all split up, she told me that we should video call each other weekly during our placements so we could stay in touch and update each other about our research.

Moving to my placement was difficult for me. Not just the move itself, but settling in as well. Any change to my routine is already difficult for me, so this major change to a place where I had no friends and no family was pretty much excruciating. I didn't have (and still don't have) a support system. In the last city I lived in (where I met this friend and started the program), I moved there with my dog, and it was a three-hour drive from my hometown, so my mother could visit me easily (and she did, many times). This time, because of the distance and the fact that my apartment building doesn't allow pets, I didn't bring my dog with me. I miss her terribly. I was expecting my friend to contact me the day I arrived, if not a couple days later, because that's what she said she would do. But she didn't.

I tried contacting her many times. I asked when she would be available for a video call. She would say "Oh, I'm free next Tuesday in the evening." I waited until then, but no video call. I let it slide the first couple of times because I knew she was busy with her placement. But I could see her stories on Snapchat and Instagram. She was out with her other friends every weekend watching local amateur car races (there's a special word for them - I can't remember what they're called), and it looked like she was having fun. To be honest, I don't really believe her when she says she's busy. So I stopped trying to reach out after a month of this. She never reached out to me first. In fact, it took her a month and a half after I moved her for her to text me first.

I'm left wondering if she was ever really my friend. Typing that really hurts me, but it's true. Because I would never treat her like this. I don't want to sound clingy, but I would have liked to stay in touch with her more often besides some distracted texts of "How's your placement going?" "Oh, it's going slowly. Kind of struggling to get by." The second text in this example of conversation is typical of what I would say to her. I even straight-up told her I was depressed and she said she couldn't answer right then because she was at her placement, but she would answer after she got home that evening. I never received her text, and she hasn't brought it up since.

Look, I'm not expecting her to be my therapist or anything. I don't want to talk to her about how I've been feeling since I got here. The two straight weeks of me lying on my bed in the dark, too depressed and paralyzed by executive dysfunction (I have ADHD as well, for which I'm not medicated due to issues with picking up my prescription in a different region than the clinic who originally prescribed the medication) to move or do anything. I don't want to tell her that it got so bad that I couldn't make myself things to eat, despite having a full refrigerator and cupboard of food. I ordered myself meals on a food delivery app, then left the garbage to rot (literally) on the floor of my room. I once tried an avocado milkshake of some sort, and hated it. Instead of throwing it out, I left it to sit on my desk. Over the days, the contents produced gas which burst the soft plastic "lid", letting fetid avocado juices run all over the desk and soak into my things which I'd left on the desk because I didn't have the energy to put them away. I don't even want to tell you about how my room smelled. I didn't shower for weeks, if not more than a month. I ran out of clean laundry because I couldn't make myself do my laundry in the basement because I could barely manage to wake up most days. I reeked, and I felt vile. I felt inhuman. I got sick twice (once with stomach flu, another with a pretty bad cold which may have been COVID, though I'm vaccinated against it) and I ate once a day. Just a 70-calorie can of chicken noodle soup. I felt like I was dying.

All I needed to hear was her (my friend's) voice. Don't get me wrong, it's not her fault that I was (and still am) this depressed. Having a video chat with her wouldn't have cured me, and I don't expect it to. I wasn't going to tell her any of this. I just wanted to feel some connection to a human being in my life. I have a roommate, but she spends all of her time with her boyfriend (who I don't like) and I don't like my roommate as a person anyway, so I would never consider being friends with her. I've gone days, if not a week at one point, without speaking to a single human being. Don't even get me started on the touch starvation. I've been very tempted to hook up with someone just to relieve that pain, but I've only done that once so far. It was a good experience, all things considered. But it still wasn't enough.

You could say that maybe my friend was also depressed or having a rough time, and that was why she wasn't answering my texts, "forgetting" to answer them, or too "busy" to video chat with me. If that's the case, all I would have needed from her is a simple "Hey, I'm not doing too well right now emotionally, so I may not be available a lot this summer to chat." That's it, that's all. But I didn't receive any kind of message from her like that. I would never, ever, tell her in real life how I really feel about her not holding up to what she said to me at the beginning of this summer and how much that hurt me. I would feel embarrassed and vulnerable if I told her something like that. It's one thing to tell her about how other people have hurt me (such as my mother, which I have told this friend about), but to tell her that she's hurt me to her face is another thing entirely. I'm scared that if I did that, she'd either try to excuse and/or explain it by saying that she was having mental health issues of her own (totally valid, I would just have appreciated more communication if that was the case) or just say that she didn't realize that I was lonely and that all I would have needed to do was straight-up tell her what I needed.

Respectfully, as an adult, I don't think I need to be the one to tell her (or anyone) this, that I was expecting clearer communication from her and that I wanted to talk to her more often as my friend. The onus should not be on me to deal with that. That is something that I think she should either already know or be able to figure out as a mature adult. I'm so fucking tired of people putting the onus on me in my life to deal with things that aren't my fault. Even though my mother is the one who hurt me so much and one could even say emotionally abused me, the onus is on me to deal with the pain through therapy (that I would need to pay out of pocket for, which I can't afford to do) and find a way to move out of her house (which she would never let me do permanently and which, again, I can't currently afford to do). Even though my mother has never genuinely apologized to me for her behavior and she continues to act that way, the onus is on me to deal with the pain and make sure that I don't do something harmful to myself because of it (I never have). The same applies to my father, except he's no longer in the picture because they're divorced and I stopped talking to him years ago (not that he ever talked to me much in the first place). I'm just so tired.

At the same time as all of this is happening, I feel like ridiculous pressures are being put on me. I have a research placement to complete, a final report to write, a presentation to prepare. I have to somehow pay rent each month, despite not having a job and having my mother get angry at me when I need to ask her for money each month to pay the rent. I have to deal with an emotionally abusive, narcissistic and controlling mother who keeps trying to micromanage my finances and gets mad at me when I so much as buy a cup of coffee without her permission. I have to eat. I have to find some loud music to listen to as my roommate has sex with her boyfriend two rooms away for the umpteenth time.

I'm just really fucking tired, and so, so angry, and there are a million things that I need to do for the research placement that I haven't been doing because I feel so depressed that I feel like my soul is screaming in pain every day. Except no one can hear it but me. And anytime that I've tried to tell my mother about any of this, she starts giving me "solutions" and "recommendations" that I didn't ask for to "solve the problem", but I never asked for that. All I ever wanted is for someone to listen to me.